It's the Spanish Flu, not anthrax.
In the OTL, the USN had ships at foreign stations which lost enough of the crew to the Flu that they required additional crews be dispatched to steam the vessels home.
Take your own advice.
Why would a flu outbreak require Britain to seize a squadron of ships? Quarantine, surely. Seizing and keeping the vessels in question long enough for the US to be forced to replace them by either keeping the
Connecticut-class or building the
South Dakota-class? Please.
The ships aren't biohazards, the crews are, and, if some disease does make them a biohazard, Britain won't want them.
Vindictiveness, spite, revenge, Bill. Did you even read the scenario I had?
First of all, no treaty of Versailles, World War I, like Korea, ends in an armistice. Second, the United States, seeing the futility of supporting the
British, pulls its troops out. The British, seeing this an American slight,
seizes the USS
Delaware as she's heading home, and then orders the rest
of BatDiv 9 to stay in Scapa Flow. Meanwhile, USS Manley, the destroyer
that escorted BatDiv 9 across the Atlantic, to Scapa Flow, is seized in Ireland. The United States demands the return of its ships, and crews, the
British refuse, and a cold war begins. The United States, in 1918-19, is like China today. A country that's on the rise. Britain, still the world's pre-
emenant superpower, which it has been for over two hundred years, is in
serious decline. Albeit, a long, slow, decline. We all know that without the
Washington, and London, Naval Treaties, the sky would have been the limit when it came to battleship tonnage. Tell me I'm wrong about this.
In the short-term, and as a stopgap, the Navy would have to keep the
Connecticut class, while it builds the
South Dakota class of 1920, and the
Lexington class battlecruisers.